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The Chinese housing market has gone through rapid growth during the past decade, and house price forecasting has evolved to be a significant issue that draws enormous attention from investors, policy makers and researchers. This study investigates neural networks for composite property price index forecasting from ten major Chinese cities for the period of July 2005–April 2021.

The goal is to build simple and accurate neural network models that contribute to pure technical forecasts of composite property prices. To facilitate the analysis, the authors consider different model settings across algorithms, delays, hidden neurons and data spitting ratios.

The authors arrive at a pretty simple neural network with six delays and three hidden neurons, which generates rather stable performance of average relative root mean square errors across the ten cities below 1% for the training, validation and testing phases.

Results here could be utilized on a standalone basis or combined with fundamental forecasts to help form perspectives of composite property price trends and conduct policy analysis.

This study aims to prepare a low-formaldehyde and environmentally friendly glucose-lignin-based phenolic resin.

The authors directly used lignin to substitute formaldehyde to prepare lignin-based phenolic resin (LPF) with urea as formaldehyde absorbent. To improve the performance of the adhesive, the biobased glucose was introduced and the modified glucose-LPF (GLPF) was obtained.

The results showed that when the replacing amount of lignin to formaldehyde reached 15 Wt.%, the physical properties of the prepared LPF met the Chinese national standard, and the bonding strength increased by 21.9%, from 0.75 to 0.96 MPa, compared with PF. The addition of glucose boost the performance of wood adhesive, for example, the free phenol content of the obtained GLPF was significantly reduced by 79.11%, from 5.60% to 1.17%, the bonding strength (1.19 MPa) of GLPF increased by 19.3% in comparison to LPF and the curing temperature of GLPF decreased by 13.08%.

The low-formaldehyde and environmentally friendly GLPF has higher bonding strength and lower curing temperature, which is profitable to industrial application.

The prepared GLPF has lower free formaldehyde and formaldehyde emission, which is cost-effective and beneficial to human health.

The joint work of lignin and glucose provides the wood adhesive with increased bonding strength, decreased free phenol content and reduced curing temperature.

Urban green spaces support people to approach active, healthy ageing, especially in high-density cities where they compensate for limited private living spaces. This research paper aims to examine how urban green spaces support active, healthy ageing by exploring correlations between behaviour, physical setting and gender difference among older people in a highly populated urban context.

Urban parks in older neighbourhoods of Macau were selected for data collection. Photographic documentation was used to collect data, with 1,201 older people photographed identified as valid samples. Each was coded according to labels of behaviour, physical setting and gender. Chi-squared tests were conducted to assess correlations between behaviours and features of physical settings, and differences between genders in behaviours and physical settings. Logistic regression analysis was conducted to further examine associations between older people's behaviours and features of physical settings by gender.

The research reveals types and frequency of behaviours displayed, preferred environmental features for different behaviours and gender differences in behaviours and preferred environmental features. Design principles targeting active, healthy ageing should consider particular amenities and street furniture, the arrangement of trees and landscapes and the integration of open and secluded places.

Previous studies address older people's behaviour from the perspective of either environmental influence or gender difference, but there have been few studies on gendered behavioural differences among older people in urban green spaces. Analysing the behaviour–physical setting–gender relationship provides more evidence in the field of built environment studies.